Wave For Hokusai

2010
© 16"x8" ; 2010

Mark J. Stock

Wave For Hokusai , ongoing
Documents
  • Wave For Hokusai
    image/png
    640 × 320
Description
This work is a tribute to the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, whose woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (c. 1829-32) is not only one of the most-recognized pieces of Japanese art, but is also appreciated by turbulence researchers as an early representation of the "turbulent cascade" of energy from large to small scales. This image is a contemporary computational re-imagining of the original work, this time juxtaposing the amoral wrath of nature with the deterministic progression of a computational algorithm. The algorithm used to create the piece was the result of five years of research into vortex sheet dynamics, and still represents the state-of-the-art six years later. The tension in the piece between the computational and natural worlds became all the more relevant when, shortly after creating the piece, a powerful earthquake struck the ocean floor off the shores of Japan, sending a tsunami over numerous coastal seawalls and causing immeasurable suffering.
Keywords
  • subjects
    • Art and Science
      • algorithms
      • dynamical systems
      • mathematics
    • Technology and Innovation
      • supercomputing
  • technology
    • displays
      • non-electronic displays
        • paper
    • software
      • Linux
Technology & Material
Material
Digital print on paper
Exhibitions & Events
Bibliography